Rules for peer-reviewing procedure

1. Manuscripts received by the Editor team, are accepted and sent by the Executive secretary for peer-reviewing procedure within 5 working days only while the manuscripts meeting the Rules for authors.

2. Review of a manuscript is to be performed confidentially by the member of the Editorial Board of the Journal who is known to be expert in the field of appropriate scientific research.

3. Reviewers are unaware of the identity of the authors, and authors are also unaware of the identity of reviewers. There are at least three or more reviewers for the total number of articles in each issue (Double-blind peer review).

4. In case of a negative review a manuscript is sent for additional independent external reviewing to the leading experts in the field of scientific research related to the topic of the submitted manuscript.

5. In some cases, for a more detailed and in-depth assessment the manuscript is sent to the independent external reviewers considered as leading experts in related disciplines.

6. The time for preparation of the review is 15 working days from the time of submitting the manuscript.

7. The tasks for the peer-reviewer include:
а) the qualified analysis of the manuscript, argued assessment accordingly to next criteria: the correspondence of the manuscript topic to the profile of the journal, actuality of the theme, scientific and methodological level of the performed study, the reliability of statistical processing of the material, novelty of the conceptual issues and conclusions, practical significance.
b) bring out in the review the clear opinion concerning the advisability of publication of the manuscript ( in full or concise form), necessity of its reworking or rejection.
c) in the case of the recommendation for the shortening or refinement of the manuscript it must be specified what sections should be subject to the shortening or refinement .
d) submit to the Editorial board the signed review. It is allowed to send the review as a scanned version in “pdf” format.

8. Authors of the manuscript have an opportunity to have a look at the text of the review.

9. The right of final decision on whether to reject, refine or publish a manuscript remains with the Editorial Board.

10. The Editorial team assumes no liability in terms of the timing of publication of submitted manuscripts.

11. In case of necessity of reworking of the manuscript, the author refines the manuscript with the description of alterations and/or objections and re-submit it to the Editorial team.

12. After the reworking of the manuscript the Executive secretary sends the manuscript for repeat peer-reviewing procedure, which must be performed within 10 working days. In this case the date of submission is considered the date of the date of the return of the refined material

13. The decision of the expediency of the publication of the manuscript after re-reviewing, as well as in the case of different opinions of reviewers, is adopted by the Editor-in –Chief or via open voting by the simple majority of votes of members of the Editorial board of the journal.

14. Reviewers are notified by the Executive secretary about that the manuscript is the private property of the authors and considered to be confidential. Reviewers are not permitted to copy manuscripts for personal needs. Breach of confidentiality is possible only in case of claiming uncertainty or falsification of materials.

15. The materials are stored in the editorial team. Shelf life of manuscripts and reviews - 5 years from the date of publication.